Hurricane Milton Made Up To 800 Times More Likely By Hotter Water In Gulf Of Mexico

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Hurricane Milton intensified from a tropical depression to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours — a rate of acceleration matched or exceeded by only two other storms tracked by the National Hurricane Center in its more than 40-year history. “Extreme rapid intensification” is defined as an increase in a tropical cyclone’s maximum sustained winds of ~58 mph (50 knots) or greater within 24 hours. Hurricane Milton experienced a ~92 mph (80 knots) increase in maximum sustained winds in 24 hours.) A Climate Central analysis published on October 7, 2024 showed the high sea surface temperatures fueling the monstrous storm’s rapid intensification were made between 400 and 800 times more likely by the climate crisis.

Climate Central noted that Milton, which is expected to make landfall in the populous Tampa Bay metropolitan area on Wednesday night, is a “historically powerful” storm that has “undergone extreme rapid intensification over sea surface temperatures warmed by climate change.” Sea surface temperatures in the area where Milton has developed “are at or above record-breaking highs,” Climate Central observed, conditions that have allowed the storm to quickly become what the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) described as an “extremely serious threat to Florida,” a state still reeling from the destructive Hurricane Helene.

Hotter Oceans, More Powerful Storms

“Climate change clearly warmed the Gulf waters that fueled Milton’s development, likely supercharging its rapid intensification and making this hurricane much more dangerous,” said Daniel Gilford, a meteorologist at Climate Central. “Fossil fuel pollution is amplifying this threat.”

New York Times climate reporters Raymond Zhong and Mira Rojanasakul explained Monday, “For a year and a half now, the upper layer of the world’s oceans has been at or near its hottest temperatures on record. The seas absorb most of the extra heat that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap near Earth’s surface, so the same human-caused forces that have been bringing abnormal heat to towns, cities, and landscapes are helping to warm the oceans.”

Climate scientists Jeff Masters and Bob Henson called the rapid intensification of Hurricane Milton “a spectacular and ominous feat.” The storm has since weakened slightly to a Category 4 as it moves across the Gulf of Mexico, but it is still expected to be devastating. “It is very likely that Milton will be a highly destructive hurricane costing over $10 billion for Florida — and Milton could end up placing among the costliest US hurricanes on record, depending on the eventual details of landfall,” they wrote on Monday. “The risk is also high that Milton will be very deadly if people in low lying areas do not heed evacuation orders and flee the hurricane.”

Evacuate Or Die

The city of Tampa is directly in the path of Milton. Mayor Jane Castor warned residents during an appearance on CNN that this storm is not to be trifled with. “This is literally catastrophic and I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re going to die. This is something that I’ve never seen in my life and I can tell you that anyone who was born and raised in the Tampa Bay area has never seen anything like this before.” She added the expected storm surge — the wall of water driven ashore by powerful storms like Milton — “is not survivable.”

The Associated Press noted on Monday that “as evacuation orders were issued, forecasters warned of a possible 8 to 12 foot (2.4 – 3.6-meter) storm surge in Tampa Bay. That’s the highest ever predicted for the region and nearly double the levels reached two weeks ago during Helene,” AP reported, citing a spokesperson with the National Hurricane Center.

“Some of the same communities ravaged by Helene are now facing this new threat. Millions of Floridians may be asked to evacuate,” the American Red Cross said in a statement. “Helene and Milton are both examples of how extreme weather is becoming more frequent and intense. In this case, meteorologists say Helene’s intense and far-reaching rainfall — which extended hundreds of miles from the coast — can be attributed to the climate crisis.”

Climate Central is finding its ability to predict the course and impact of Milton is being hampered by the effects Hurricane Helene had on NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information based in Asheville, North Carolina. Typically, Climate Central quantifies the specific influence of climate change on sea surface temperatures daily using OISST data. However, due to the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene, those daily updates remain unavailable. The disruption caused by Hurricane Helene is directly hindering scientists’ ability to report on Hurricane Milton.

In her Letters From An American blog on Substack for October 7, Heather Cox Richardson wrote that global heating has pushed the surface temperature of the part of the Gulf of Mexico where Milton formed higher by 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2.2 degrees Celsius). Veteran Florida meteorologist and hurricane specialist John Morales choked up as he called it “horrific.”

DeSantis Refuses To Speak With Harris

President Biden has approved an emergency declaration for Florida, enabling the federal government to move supplies in ahead of the storm’s arrival, but the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, refused to take a call from Vice President Kamala Harris about planning for the storm. When asked about DeSantis’s refusal at today’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that the president and vice president have reached out to give support to the people of Florida.

As for DeSantis, “It’s up to him if he wants to respond to us or not. But what we’re doing is we’re working with state and local officials to make sure that we are pre-positioned to make sure that we are ready to be there for the communities that are going to be impacted. We are doing the job… to protect the communities and to make sure that they have everything that is needed.” When asked about DeSantis’s snub, Kamala Harris answered, “It’s just utterly irresponsible, and it is selfish, and it is about political gamesmanship instead of doing the job that you took an oath to do, which is to put the people first.”

Before this year, Florida had goals of moving toward clean energy, but in May 2024, DeSantis signed a law to restructure the state’s energy policy so that addressing climate change would no longer be a priority. The law deleted any mention of climate change in state laws. Saying that “Florida rejects the designs of the left to weaken our energy grid, pursue a radical climate agenda, and promote foreign adversaries,” the governor posted a graphic on X that said the law would “INSULATE FLORIDA FROM GREEN ZEALOTS….” By doing so, Rabid Ron sounds more and more like Colonel Bat Guano, the unhinged character in the Stanley Kubrick movie Dr. Strangelove who was always muttering darkly that “we need to preserve our precious bodily fluids.”

Richardson goes on to say that Trump and Project 2025 — a playbook for the next Republican administration authored by allies of the right wing Heritage Foundation and closely associated with Trump and J.D. Vance — both take the position that concerns about climate change are overblown. Project 2025 says NOAA, whose duties include issuing hurricane warnings, is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future US prosperity.” It calls for either eliminating its functions, sending them to other agencies, privatizing them, or putting them under the control of states and territories. Perhaps in a future extremist right wing government, a few MAGA supporters will sit around in a windowless room and draw expected storm paths on weather charts with a Sharpie, just like their once and future king, Donald Trump.

Truth & Consequences

New York Times contributor Jamelle Bouie wrote on October 8 about the deceitful and deliberate campaign by Trump and Vance to spread lies about how the federal government responded to to Hurricane Helene just two weeks ago. In his op-ed piece he said:

Politics is not the place for perfect honesty, but some measure of truth-telling is necessary to the project of collective self government. It is incumbent on political leaders, specifically, to strive for some correspondence to reality when they make their case to the public. They set the terms of political discourse and contestation. They define the boundaries of what’s fair and what’s foul. And their words and actions affect the public at large. Ordinary people take cues from leaders when they try to decide what it means, for themselves, to be political.

When political leaders lie with abandon — when they do so flagrantly with no other concern than their most narrow interest or when they do so to attack innocent people in the service of demagoguery — they are telling their supporters that this is what it means to engage in political life. They are trying to build a culture of dishonesty that erodes trust and makes collective action all the more difficult. They are weakening the values and the virtues that facilitate republican self government.

Democracy is a discipline. It is a habit. It must be cultivated so that we can learn to act democratically — so that it becomes a part of who we are. Part of the discipline of democracy is meeting others as equals, fellow citizens with whom you can reason and deliberate.

To lie without shame about everything — even something as dire as a natural disaster — is to show contempt for the idea that you can reason with or persuade other people. It is to attempt to shape their reality so that they can’t really disagree. It is to demand obedience to a narrative. It is to cultivate the habits of autocracy.

Whether it is Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, or native born Americans in North Carolina, Donald Trump and JD Vance are doing whatever they can to destabilize the capacity of ordinary people to trust any information that comes their way. They are asking their supporters and followers to ignore their senses, to ignore their experience, in favor of a constructed reality. They are telling the country that nothing — not the impartial judgments of trained observers nor the words of the storm victims themselves — counts as much as the story they want to tell.

As strategy goes, this could work. Trump and Vance might win the election with a message that is far more fantasy than it is reality. But whether they do or don’t triumph in the end, the damage will be done. Trump has successfully trained millions of Americans to think of the truth as an obstacle to winning power. He may not be able to capitalize on that victory. Eventually, someone will.

The Takeaway

That is the point. The MAGAlomanics are deliberately, and with malice aforethought, eroding the public’s confidence in government as an institution. That is not a new strategy. We saw it in the writings of William F. Buckley, Jr, the words of Ronald Reagan, and the ravings of Rush Limbaugh. It has been picked up and amplified by Fox News, then turbocharged by social media, which depends on the dissemination of lies to generate income.

Hurricane Milton, which may become one of the most powerful storms in US history, is on a collision course with the city of Tampa. Using it to gain a short term political advantage would be despicable. Expect nothing less from the asses of evil — Donald Trump and JD Vance.